


Off To The Races

by gloriouscacophony (KatrinaKay)



Series: Ineffable Husbands Week 2019 - SFW [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Cars, Crowley's Bentley (Good Omens), Driving, First Kiss, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 08:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20560997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatrinaKay/pseuds/gloriouscacophony
Summary: Ineffable Husbands Week - Day 6: Trip/Drive/DestinationIn which Aziraphale asks Crowley to teach him to drive.





	Off To The Races

  
  
  
“Crowley, I was wondering...if it wouldn’t be an imposition, that is, if you would, well—” 

“Oh my Go- Sat- Somebody, angel, spit it out!” Crowley spat out impatiently, after listening to the angel stutter and stumble. (Although his embarrassed blush was quite appealing, but Crowley would rather have Hell after him again than say so to the angel. Not that the odd demon grunt didn’t show up and poke around for a bit occasionally, but nobody important.)

“—would you teach me how to drive an automobile?” Aziraphale finally blurted out, looking up from his anxiously knotted hands to meet Crowley’s eyes. 

“Drive? What d’you want to learn how to drive for?” Of all the things he expected the angel to ask him for, driving lessons were not high up on the list. (Said list included a puppy, another trip to the Ritz, and some of those truffles he liked that Crowley had found one time. Actually no, Aziraphale seemed more of the cat type.) 

“Oh, I don’t know, I just thought, ‘My, Crowley did seem to enjoy his Bentley, maybe I’ve been missing out,’” Aziraphale replies brightly, gesturing with an arm that knocks his cocoa across the table. He miracles up the mess, giving Crowley a sheepish smile. “We could make a day of it, take a trip out to the countryside. Haven’t done that in ages.” 

“Since the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, you mean.” The demon sighs. “I do miss that Bentley, what a grand old girl, hasn’t been the same since Adam fixed her...all right, let me make a few calls, see if I can find something a little more your speed.”

“Oh, we won’t be taking yours? I thought…”

Crowley thinks of the Bentley, sitting on the curb outside of the bookshop in her pristine, ebony glory and shudders at the imagined sound of grinding gears. “I wouldn’t do that to her. Don’t worry, we’ll find you a nice automatic to start out with.” 

The angel beams at him over his cocoa, his aura radiating blessed contentment that stings Crowley’s eyes a bit, even behind his dark shades. “This is going to be quite fun! I’ll consult the maps, see if there isn’t someplace with a little roadside pub we could stop at…”

Crowley rests his head in his hand and watches the angel prattle on, babbling happily about potential destinations, with a small, private grin on his face. 

“Is something the matter, my dear?” Aziraphale asks, breaking his reverie minutes later.

“What? No, just, ngk, thinking. Hrsk, got to be off, be back in a bit!” Crowley garbles out, utterly embarrassed to be caught staring at his favorite being in the universe, then vanishes in a fluttering of invisible wings.  
  


* * *

  
Two days later, he pulls up to the curb of Aziraphale’s new bookshop in a car that almost makes Dick Turpin look like a new-off-the-line sedan. The 1994 Volvo 850 GLT Estate has seen better days, and those were decades ago, before the crack in the windshield and the scrapes on the back driver’s-side door, before even its odometer gave up and stopped counting the distance. But it drives reasonably well, and Crowley had only paid a bit of cash for it (conjured cash, but still; it was for the angel and he wanted to do things properly).

When Crowley barges into the bookshop, Aziraphale looks up where he’s hunched over an illuminated manuscript with his magnifier. “Hello, my dear! I was just looking through this account of Saint John—oh, have you found a car? Is it here?”

“‘S outside. You figure out where you want to go?” The echoes of a conversation in his Bentley long ago hang unmentioned between them.

“It’s a bit far, but I was hoping we might visit this lovely little village, it’s about an hour south…” The angel stands and stretches, then pads over to a map he’s pinned up. Crowley sidles over and peers at it over his shoulder. “...and there’s a bookshop there that sounds rather quaint.”

He looks up at Crowley and blinks; their faces are inches from each other, and this close, Crowley can see the hint of green in Aziraphale’s stunning blue eyes, a faint shade of aqua like deep, still waters in the tropical places the demon likes to visit when London is too cold to bear. “Crowley?” the angel says quietly, waiting, and if Crowley was human, his heart would be dancing a tarantella in his chest at the sound of his name. 

But he’s a demon, and a sub-par one at that, so he jerks away and saunters towards the door, hands shoved in his pockets in feigned nonchalance as he magics his dark glasses into place. “Sounds thrilling, let’s go.” He doesn’t need to breathe, of course, but he exhales loudly as soon as he’s outside, knees wobbly.

Aziraphale joins him outside in a moment, wearing a driving cap and gloves that make Crowley snort. But the angel is distracted by the clunker sitting on the curb a safe distance from the Bentley. “Is that..._ my _car?” he exclaims, immediately enthralled by the Volvo. He circles the car, peering through the windows and wiggling happily as he points out the lovely silver color and how sturdy the vehicle looks.

“Well, you just going to look or are you going to get in?” Crowley says with a soft, not unkind smile, and the angel makes his way to the driver’s side and slides in. Crowley looks up and says a quiet prayer begging to make it out of this escapade in one piece, then opens the passenger door and gets in.

Aziraphale already has his hands on the wheel and is inspecting the rearview mirror. “Does this need to be pointed at me, or at you?”

“Whoa there,” Crowley says, adjusting the mirror to the proper angle. He shows Aziraphale how to set his side mirrors; one of them has to be manhandled into place but they get it straightened out.

“Okay, this is an automatic, not a manual, so you don’t need to worry about shifting gears. Just worry about these three: park, reverse, and drive, okay?” The angel nods, so he moves on: “You have two pedals, don’t mix them up. That one’s the brake, and that one makes it go. You want to go easy on both when you use them, really gradual, or you’ll drive us into the side of a building or something, got it?” The angel nods again, looking down his feet.

“Think you’re ready, then?” Crowley asks, and Aziraphale looks up at him like a deer in headlights, suddenly realizing that he is actually going to drive. He swallows audibly, face pale. Without thinking, Crowley reaches out and places a hand on his, squeezing gently.

“C’mon angel, you’ve done much scarier things than this. You’ve already driven a scooter, remember?”   
  
Still stunned, Aziraphale’s eyes flick down to their hands, and Crowley pulls back as if scalded.

“But that was different, you know. I wasn’t _ really _ driving…”

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want—” The car had only put him out a few hundred pounds of imaginary money—

—and then Aziraphale has yanked the car into gear, put his foot down, turned the wheel...and shot them straight for oncoming traffic.  
  


* * *

  
When they reach the village, Crowley stumbles out of the car and wipes his face. The first few minutes of the drive had been, quite frankly, terrifying. He’d narrowly managed to jerk the wheel and point them out of harm’s way, but getting out of London had proved a nightmare. A few more close calls later and he’d whisked them in an instant outside of the M5 and onto a graveled, narrow lane in the middle of nowhere. 

He’d also realized something around that time and told Aziraphale that he’d didn’t _ have _ to drive fast. The angel had glanced at him, confused, until Crowley had pointed to the speedometer and explained that cars didn’t inherently go at breakneck speed, he just preferred it that way. Aziraphale had sighed in relief and confessed that he didn’t want to ask and declared his new top speed to be a much slower one. 

After that, Aziraphale had settled into driving fairly well, mostly keeping the Volvo on the road and only occasionally panicking enough to require reassurance from Crowley. Although Crowley was feeling anxious enough from the initial minutes of near-death pandemonium, a feeling that was perhaps similar to how Aziraphale had felt during all those trips he’d clutched the door and prayed for salvation from Crowley’s driving.

They eat a nice, long lunch at the pub, some sort of layered sandwich with lots of bacon (which Crowley chars black the way he likes after the barman leaves) and chips. Aziraphale finds the bookshop’s selection lacking (_“All the first editions are ones I already own, but the shopkeeper did say he might be able to find me a few I’ve been looking for.”_) but they discover a small duck pond nearby. Crowley conjures up some birdseed to draw the birds closer as he and Aziraphale lounge on a wooden bench near the water. (Unlike the ones in St. James, these ducks seemed wholesome and innocent and therefore deserved something more than bog-standard bread.)

After he’d chucked the last of his birdseed in the water, Aziraphale glances back at his crumpled, aged Volvo and smiles, perfectly content. Crowley, splayed across the bench in his usual sprawl, watches him, a hint of grin on his face at the angel’s joy.

“Crowley, d’you mind...that is, I would very much like to thank you…” The angel asks tentatively, looking now at him with a curious expression that Crowley can’t read.

“The car, you mean? Naaah, it’s fine, it’s not much—” But the angel frowns slightly and cuts him off. 

“No, I want to—oh, bugger it,” he says, then leans over and kisses Crowley firmly.

Stunned, the demon doesn’t move, and Aziraphale pulls back, blushing furiously and looking anywhere but at him. 

“Oh dear, I’m sorry, I just—mmmph!” His words are muffled as Crowley regains consciousness and pulls him back down to him by the lapels, knocking his driving cap off and his own glasses askew as he presses his mouth to the angel’s in reply.

Neither of them really has to breathe, but they’ve grown quite used to it, so eventually they part just slightly to gather themselves and stare at each other. “I’ve wanted to do that for ages, you know,” Aziraphale says softly.

“Me too, you idiot,” Crowley replies, extricating himself from the angel’s weight and standing to offer Aziraphale his hand, grinning mischievously. “C’mon, let me show you the other fun part about having a car.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ok but I think we all know Aziraphale would be an absolute holy terror behind the wheel. I wouldn't trust him with a Bentley either.


End file.
